By: Mackenzie Wright | October 22, 2018

A mom in Utah went shopping at Walmart, and apparently, she didn't feel like dragging the kids into the store. She decided to leave the children behind - not at home, not even in the back seat of the car.

This worst-mother-of-the-year-contender locked her kids in the trunk of her car so she could get some shopping done peacefully. Luckily, two other women loading up their groceries heard the cries for help before it was too late.

Charity Maw happened to be in the right place at the right time, and it may have saved the lives of two children. Last Thursday, around 6:00 p.m., she was in the Walmart parking lot and heard something that sounded like pounding coming from a nearby car.

Another woman, known only as Heidi, also happened to be nearby and heard the pounding, too. The two women investigated to find the source of the sound, and then they heard screaming.

When they found the car, Heidi leaned down and put her head against the trunk. She couldn't believe what she heard.

“I could hear some kids crying,” Heidi said. “I turned to my friend and I'm like, 'There's people in this trunk. There's kids in this trunk!'”

The two women managed to talk the children through the task of popping the emergency latch on the inside of the trunk. As soon as the door popped open, a five-year-old and a two-year-old, both girls, leapt out into the arms of their rescuers.

“Both kids just came out... they just jumped out at us. One lady took the 2-year-old, I took the 5-year-old,” said Heidi.

According to witnesses, the kids were sweating and crying. Maw doesn't even want to think about what might have happened if no one heard them on that warm May afternoon in a black Chevy sedan.

“I can just imagine the car trunk because it was a dark car and the heat going on it... if nobody would've found them they could have died,” she said.

“It’s never right to lock a child inside of a vehicle, let alone a trunk of a vehicle," said Riverdale Police Lt. Casey Warren. The officer explains that heat is not the only danger. Gas and exhaust fumes from other cars that might leak into the trunk can be deadly.

Tori Castillo, the 39-year-old mother, was spotted struggling with the children and putting them in the trunk. A witness watched her do it and walk into the store. The witness called the police and said that two Good Samaritans were already on the job getting the kids out.

Before police arrived, Castillo finished her shopping and returned to the car. She tried to justify her decision to lock her kids in the trunk by saying that her babysitter had bailed on her and she didn't know what else to do with the kids.

Police arrested Castillo and charged her with four counts of child abuse. She was also charged with theft, though the incident related to that charge is unclear.

The children, according to Utah's Division of Child and Family Services, are with a 'responsible party'. Fox 13 News reports they are now in the custody of their father.